Guillermo del Toro + Charlie Kaufman = Slaughterhouse Five, the Film

If the director behind the feverish nightmares of Pan’s Labyrinth and the screenwriter of the darkly hilarious and surreal Being John Malkovich can’t nail down the Tralfamadorians’ fatalistic humor and poor old John Pilgram’s perpetual time-tripping, we’re pretty certain no one can.

“Charlie and I talked for about an hour-and-a-half and came up with a perfect way of doing the book,” Toro told the Daily Telegraph. “I love the idea of the Tralfamadorians to be ‘unstuck in time,’ where everything is happening at the same time. And that’s what I want to do. It’s just a catch-22. The studio [Universal] will make it when it’s my next movie, but how can I commit to it being my next movie until there’s a screenplay? Charlie Kaufman is a very expensive writer!”

Hopefully Del Toro’s current big-screen blockbuster Transformers 4 Pacific Rim will help foot the bill, because this sounds too perfect not to happen.